2 Hunters in Brazil Killed ... by Giant Anteaters

posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore, Newser Staff
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2 years ago

(NEWSER) – Some 5,000 giant anteaters are thought to exist in the wild, and encounters with humans are rare and largely harmless. The hairy animals with long noses and an appetite for insects do sport "pocketknives" for front claws,AFP reports, which they typically put to use digging into anthills. In two separate incidents in Brazil, however, the 4- to 7-foot-long animals have dug into people instead, and the hunters who encountered them bled to death after being punctured in their thighs and upper arms; one man was hit in the femoral arteries. Both cases, one in 2010 and one in 2012, have just been described in scientific literature this month.